A Dialog is a series of Transactions relating to one session and lasts for the duration of the session.

In SIP, a request and its response, or responses, constitute a transaction.

REGISTER is used to create a binding between the SIP address and the current contact address of a user.
Its purpose has been extended for IMS to also include Authentication of the User.

INVITE establishes a dialog and is typically used to request a session with another User Agent. The
INVITE will in most cases include an attached SDP offer, listing the media formats that the User Agent
wants to use and the IP address and port number where it wants to receive the media flow.
An INVITE can also be sent during a session to modify session properties, known as a re-INVITE.

ACK is a final acknowledgement that terminates an INVITE transaction. It is sent by the UAC after
receiving a final response from the UAS. ACK is a transaction in itself, without a response.

CANCEL can be used by the UAC to terminate a transaction before the final response has been received.
After a final response has been generated, the CANCEL will have no meaning.

BYE ends a session, and triggers a release in the user plane.

OPTIONS allows a UA to query another UA or a proxy server as to its capabilities. This allows a client to
discover information about the supported methods, content types, extensions, codecs, and so on,
without "ringing" the other party. OPTIONS can be used for checking both signaling and media
capabilities.

UPDATE is an extension to the SIP protocol that allows for updating a session during session
establishment, without affecting the state of the SIP dialog. It is particularly useful for early media
negotiations.

The PRACK message is an Acknowledgement used for Provisional responses, to ensure reliability. When
a provisional response contains vital information, such as an SDP, the server can demand a PRACK from
the client by including Require: 100rel in the response. He will then get a PRACK back as an
acknowledgement that the response was received. We will have a closer look at this mechanism later in
this module.

PUBLISH is used to publish “Event State” information to a server. Often this is Presence information
from a user to the Presence Server.

SUBSCRIBE is used to request presence information updates about a user from a Presence Server.

NOTIFY is used by a Presence Server to send presence information about a user to other users.

Publish, Subscribe and Notify can also be used for other types of event notifications than presence-
related ones.

MESSAGE is used to transfer an instant message between users.

INFO is used for transporting application level information via the SIP signaling path without changing
the state of the session or the SIP dialog.
REFER indicates that the recipient should contact a third party, using the ‘refer-to’ information provided
in the request. Refer can be used to enable many applications, including Call Transfer and 3-way calls.

In a SIP environment, a Proxy can receive a single INVITE and generate two or more INVITEs to the next
proxy. This is called SIP forking.

Forking occurs when a user registers two or more SIP UAs with the same priority value in the Contact
header.

A User Agent is a SIP end point. This could be a User Terminal, an Application Server or a Gateway. User
Agents are the origin and/or destination of SIP signaling.

As I mentioned before, a User Agent can be either client or server.

The User Agent Client, or UAC is the originating side of a transaction, and the User Agent Server, or UAS
is the terminating side of a transaction.

A User Agent terminal can be implemented as a traditional phone or as an application software running
on a PC or 3G or 4G handset.

A SIP Proxy is a network entity able to route and forward SIP requests, based on SIP header information.
Proxies are classified as stateless or stateful depending on whether they keep track of session variables
or not. Some proxies remain in the signaling path for the full duration of the session while others drop
out after the first transaction.

In IMS, the S-, P- and E-CSCFs are stateful proxies, while the I-CSCF is stateless.

A SIP Redirect server does not act as a proxy. Instead, it gives the information about where to send a
session establishment request back to a client, which then re-sends the request towards the correct
destination. The Redirect server is not implemented in IMS.

To make SIP servers aware of where users are located, the users have to register towards a SIP server
acting as a Registrar. The Registrar has the function of a UAS during the registration procedure.

In IMS, S-CSCF acts as the Registrar.

A SIP server can also act as a Back-to-Back User Agent. Logically, a Back-to-Back User Agent consists of
two user agents. Signaling for a call enters one of the UAs, acting as a UAS, and leaves through the other
UA, acting as a UAC. The difference compared to a proxy is that the B2BUA can modify the payload, for
example the SDP. When a Back-to-Back user agent is used, the connection will consist of two call legs,
one on each side of the server.

› Record-Route

– Header where proxies wanting to remain in the dialog after establishment add their URI.

– Stored by the UAS and forwarded in a suitable response.

› Route

– The stored Route Set is mapped into this header in later requests in the session, and
used for routing.
› Loose Routing and the ‘lr’ parameter

– ‘lr’ indicates that a proxy implements Loose Routing.

– For backwards compatibility.

– Strict Routing is not used in IMS.

› The P-headers are SIP headers used specifically for IMS.

› They include:

› P-Asserted-Identity, identifying the sending user. It is inserted by a trusted entity in the

network. If present in a SIP INVITE, this Id is used by S-CSCF to examine a user’s originating
triggers, overruling the ‘From’ header.

› P-Visited-Network-ID, an identifier of the visited network, inserted by the P-CSCF in that

network. Used by the home network to validate the existence of a roaming agreement.

› P-Access-Network-Info, or PANI, indicates the type of access technology used, and in the case
of cell and mobile access, optionally the ID of the cell where the terminal is connected. The PANI
header is, among other things, used to enable Access Awareness in the CSCF.